Breaking them up would be silly. they are making significant contributions to computing and have given the industry the foundation from which to branch out. The fact that Apple, Google, and others are doing well suggests that there is no need for uncle sam to get involved. They have bigger fish to fry.

You might question: Breaking them up or breaking them down? It seems -in the news as lots of us already knew- they are the biggest source of IP theft and espionage. And don't forget their direct link to our friends, the NSA. They were the first to participate, so basically affecting our democratic society (!!!!)

Further, you might wonder if they brought us much. As soon as we are all soooo stupid to start working in the cloud, let us assume that, then you mght wonder: Do we still need them?

People aren't looking at Apple because it has been far more successful and innovative in the past 5 years than Microsoft. One could argue that Apple actually realized the economy of scale, and exploited the power and coherence of their integrated business model. On the other hand, I personally think that they won't be able to sustain that and that their recent performance shows signs of stagnation (yay, a plastic iPhone!). So you're right, Apple's next.

Now, how about Google? I am a big fan and wish them well, and I believe that they do benefit from the integration within their businesses. At the same time, they wield so much power resulting from their aggregate knowledge of our personal lifes, that a breakup might be the only mitigation.

Breaking up Microsoft? Well, as you mentioned within your article, breaking up a company into different parts is nothing new. But why would Microsoft want to do that? Is there a major problem with the board members not agreeing on a strategy? I don't see a need for that at this time. As long as sales continue to make a major impact on the balance sheet and the different departments are enhancing the products that they are working on or developing, I would not recommend making such a major organizational change at this time. You don't change things just to change it; not for a business.

Well if you want an open scientific debate, then why not start with the basic science?

Do you accept CO2 absorbs IR? It doesn't get any simpler than that. If you do, then it trivially follows that by increasing CO2 concentration we create an energy imbalance where the earth receives more energy than it radiates back into space. The basic science is very simple, and models very accurately predict what happens when you create such an energy imbalance. No need for some weird unscientific monologue about the vagueness of the definition of an Ice age!!!

Note that climate models do only model the climate, not the weather. So the fact the oceans have received much of the energy imbalance in the last decade (and continue to expand faster than ever as a result) is not something you would expect models to predict, and neither does it prove the models are in any way incorrect. So far nobody has proven it is a long term event, recent papers claim it is a short term oscillation. Note the energy has not disappeared, what do you think will happen when all that stored heat gets dumped back into the atmosphere?

"While you are not a crazy climate change conspiracist like the other guy, you do show the hallmarks of a skeptic with some denialist aspects."

You don't know me and I don't care for somebody to stick labels on me just for a few sentences. Especially since you obviously imply that I have certain opionions which I actually don't have ... see below.

"We do indeed change our climate/environment but we can also undo those changes when we want to at minimal cost."

That's just a statement of _your_ opinion and no proof for anything. Especially statements like "minimal cost" are strange. You can always do something at "minimal" cost. But in some cases "minimal" would still be unpayable.

Obvious examples are acid rain and the ozone hole. Smog has pretty much disappeared as well. Did catalysators, filters and other pollution controls increase costs? Sure, but most people would agree that the cost ended up being relatively small (particularly when you consider the positive health benefits of reducing pollution) and was worth given the huge benefit it provided.

Here you seem to imply that I believe that nothing can/should be done against any kind of environmental polution. Of course that's not the case. In the 80s the reasons for aicid rain etc. were evaluated and reasonable measures against them were implemented. That was usefull.

So why should reducing our CO2 output be any different?

Mainly because in the above cases we were working in a simple setting with predictable outcome and used simple measures to achive a limited goal. In the case of CO2 things are way more complicated. For instance when I open Wikipedia and look for Ice Age I find, that at they list "normal" climate as something where the pole caps are ice free. One definition of Ice Age seems to be that the pole caps are under ice. So if the ice-free climate is called "normal" we are obviously trying to keep the climate colder than it was most of the time in earth history. Of course such a look at things is very simplistic and non-scientific, but that's my major problem : The whole discussion is done in a very un-scientific way. I don't want read proclamations that just state what is and what has to be done. I want an open, understandable scientific debate - out in the open for everybody to follow - don't worry I do have a brain and can think myself. And one important aspect are computer simulations. I know how to do them myself, I know how they fail. And to adapt a model until it fits the limited historical data is ABSOLUTELY NO WAY to get something that correctly predicts the future. Not unless you make a prediction now and in 20 years you find that it was correct. But as it is the current stop in warming is a hard blow to all the simulations because it was NOT predicted. You can't just ignore that by "oh, the Pacific obviously takes that energy". The problem is that the fact shows that your SIM IS BROKEN. You start from scratch and HAVE to wait another 15 years. Everything else is not scientific.

"The only reason we have so many denialists is because reducing CO2 may also reduce the enormous profits of some of the largest companies in the world (all oil companies of course) - which wasn't the case with acid rain or the ozone hole.

Note that the only people exposed to be doing pseudo science, data manipulation, cherry picking and spreading lies are the denialists. I know of only one group of actual skeptics which actually did do some real science - BEST. And they did prove the hockey stick graph yet again... That really says it all."

I do not agree with the last two chapters eighter, but have no time to answer, sorry. I'll stop this discussion here as it's not the right place for it.

Yes the climate changes – always has, always will. It has changed because of variations in the power of the sun and variations in the earth's orbit. That doesn't mean that these changes have been benign and it doesn't mean that this time it isn't us doing the changing. You say some, but this time it is changing many orders of magnitude faster than it has ever changed before. No, nobody can be sure what the climate would have done if human had never emitted any CO2; anyone who thinks science can be sure about anything doesn't understand science. But we can be quite sure and we are. That's for a series of reasons:

1. We have a very good understanding of how the climate works. Of course, new things are being discovered, but that's the case in all branches of science. It doesn't mean that scientists don't understand anything.

2. We have tons of data going back millions of years.

3. The anti-climate-change lobby is nothing but politics – there is no science involved whatsoever. Whilst any human endeavour is bound to involve some politics, science is the best way mankind has for finding out truth: science is ultra-cautious, ultra-conservative and ultimately self-correcting. The biggest prizes in science – Nobel prizes and long-lasting fame – are won by those who upset the apple-cart, not by those who merely maintain the status quo. Similarly, people do not hand out funding to people who tell them what they already know and journals do not publish papers that reveal nothing new (because people would not pay for them if they did). Lobby groups that campaign against climate-change have millions of dollars of funding; do you not wonder why none of that is spent by real scientists instead of pundits and politicians? (Why would there only be scientific funding available to put the case for climate change?)

Actually important "scientists" were accused of to manipulating important data, hiding unwanted data, not providing their data for scrutiny by others, etc. by ideologically motivated climate-change deniers, cherry-picking and mis-representing a few emails out of thousands. Three separate enquiries have found these accusations to be baseless.

Unlike our conspiracy-theory inspired friend ("one world government", please!), you are making a good attempt to sound reasonable but ultimately you are making similar kinds of arguments to proponents of intelligent design and homeopathy. If you are as reasonable as you think you are, why not follow the links I posted earlier and make a genuine attempt to refute or understand the science?

While you are not a crazy climate change conspiracist like the other guy, you do show the hallmarks of a skeptic with some denialist aspects. We do indeed change our climate/environment but we can also undo those changes when we want to at minimal cost.

Obvious examples are acid rain and the ozone hole. Smog has pretty much disappeared as well. Did catalysators, filters and other pollution controls increase costs? Sure, but most people would agree that the cost ended up being relatively small (particularly when you consider the positive health benefits of reducing pollution) and was worth given the huge benefit it provided.

So why should reducing our CO2 output be any different? The only reason we have so many denialists is because reducing CO2 may also reduce the enormous profits of some of the largest companies in the world (all oil companies of course) - which wasn't the case with acid rain or the ozone hole.

Note that the only people exposed to be doing pseudo science, data manipulation, cherry picking and spreading lies are the denialists. I know of only one group of actual skeptics which actually did do some real science - BEST. And they did prove the hockey stick graph yet again... That really says it all.

Climate change denial ? Who would deny that the climate changes ? I would even go as far as - yes, 8 Billion people with our current industry surely have _some_ influence on the climate. But that's where it stops. We simply don't know enough about the way the climate works in order to control it. And that's what's obviously intended - humans want to control the climate by regulating the human emisions. But nobody can be sure what the climate would have done if human had never emited any CO2. Nor can anybody really say how much CO2 would lead to what change in which location. That's for a series of reasons :

1. All the time new processes of nature influencing the climate are being discovered ... so until now we don't even know all the parts of the machine

2. We have no good data for important things like temperature, humidity, pressure for any years before, let's say 1850 ... garbage in --> garbage out

3. The entire scientific world working in the climate front has become hopelessly political ... people with the "wrong" opinion can't lead a normal discussion based on scientific facts ... actually important "scientist" were found to manipulate important data, hide unwanted data, not to provide their data for scrutiny by other, etc. It's proven that money was given only to scientists with the "correct" opinion ... So unfortunately I don't believe such people any farther than I can throw them.

When I see what politicians do in small scale (since they can't be held accountable and often have no knowledge of correct scientific work process) I'm very affraid of the day when our technology will _really_ be able to influence things like wheater and climate. We'll all be in space suits before the next elections.

That doesn't mean that I want to polute the planet and don't care about nature. I just want to know what I do before I start doing it.